Mar. 9, 2014

David Gott holds a carton of his David's Famous Gourmet Frozen Custard. / Benjamin Roberts/Iowa City Press-Citizen

Written by

Aly Brown

Iowa City Press-Citizen

IOWA CITY, IA. — David Gott said he didn’t intend to take his hobby of making frozen custard outside of his home, but now he’s the face of David’s Famous Gourmet Frozen Custard.

The 58-year-old South Amana resident said it was “dumb luck” that he made it this far.

“I’m this ya-ya stockbroker that makes good ice cream, and I got tired of everyone saying, ‘Oh, you should sell this, it’s really good,’ ” he said. “It all just kind of happened.”

Gott said nearly seven years ago, he combined his grandma’s vanilla ice cream recipe and a church cookbook recipe and adapted them to use cream instead of milk, added more eggs, and used high-quality bourbon vanilla for flavoring.

Gott said he started experimenting with flavors when he and a friend would head to Whitey’s Ice Cream for coffee ice cream, which wasn’t always in stock when his craving arose.

Gott said he went home, pulled a few shots of espresso and added it to his vanilla recipe when he had the idea to sell it to riders on the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa passing through town.

Gott said he recruited his daughter to sell 6-ounce servings for $3, which now he said was “too cheap.”

“I told her, ‘You get your butt out there and you make some money. I’ll make as much as you can sell,’ ” he said. “She sold more than I could make in three hours.”

Gott said he kept hearing rave reviews from friends, families and co-workers. Through networking, Gott said he ended up sending samples to a retired vice president of Haagen-Dazs and the regional manager for Trader Joe’s, who loved it.

Gott said his high-quality ingredients and recipe set him apart, with 20 percent fat. Most ice cream manufacturers won’t go over 16 percent, he said, because of cost constraints and industry equipment standards.

Now his frozen custard is hitting the freezers of Hy-Vee and Fareway stores in Iowa City, Coralville, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and even a tiny gas station in St. Paul, Minn.